The same holds true for you personally. If you want to motivate yourself to higher performance, you should be aware of what drives you. This has so much to do with your values as a person.

So what are values? Simply put, values are things that motivate us, and they are what’s behind our actions and aspirations. All people have different values, and therefore, different things drive them. Some people are driven by the desire to get ahead. Others are driven by the desire to achieve personal happiness and pleasure in life. There are some who are driven by the passion to uphold something larger than life, such as love, sacrifice, peace, leadership, and other abstract ideas.

Notice that your driving force is the dominant thought that determines the way you act or behave. A good example would be a soccer player who wants to win a World Cup championship. His driving force is to contribute to his team so they could reach that goal.

The problem is, a lot of people do not know what drives them or motivates them. The result is that they rarely achieve something worthwhile. Discover your primary source of motivation, and notice where you frequently invest your time. That’s how you get an idea of what your true values are.